Trying to persuade people to abandon deeply held views often backfires, leaving groups entrenched and unable to move forward. A new study by researchers at the University of Bath in the UK proposes a strategy that is both surprising and more effective: encourage neutrality.
The researchers, led by Professor Kit Yates from the Department of Mathematics, found that when individuals are encouraged to step back and adopt a neutral position—for example by abstaining in a vote—groups become more responsive, decisions become easier to reach, and shifts in consensus happen more smoothly.
Neutrality does not stall progress—it creates valuable breathing space in which people can reassess their stance, making it easier for a consensus to form or for a group to change its mind when circumstances evolve.
Professor Yates said, “Allowing people to take a neutral stance creates breathing space for reassessment, making it easier for a consensus to form or for a group to change its mind.
“By recognizing neutrality as a feature—not a bug—of group decisions, our study resolves a long-standing trade-off: you don’t need elaborate, many person dynamics or sophisticated social structures for consensus and flexibility to emerge.
“Instead, once neutrality is allowed as an option, very simple interactions between pairs of individuals, where A influences B or B influences A, are enough to produce the observed group level behavior.”
In the new study—published in Advanced Science—the researchers developed a simple mathematical model to explore how groups make decisions. Their model shows that groups can reach agreement in two ways.
One is the familiar route of persuading undecided individuals to join one side. The other, which has received much less attention, is a “de-escalation” route, in which disagreement pushes people into a neutral state before they later choose a side independently.
The team found this de-escalation route to be particularly effective, allowing groups to change direction more quickly. This occurs because the number of active decision-makers becomes smaller when more individuals become neutral, giving chance a greater influence and allowing a new consensus to form faster.
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The findings suggest practical strategies for adaptive decision making: if you want to overturn an entrenched consensus, it can be more effective to cool down strong opponents so they adopt a neutral stance, rather than targeting only the stereotypical “floating voter.”
“It might be annoying when someone is on the fence about an important topic that you feel passionately about, but in fact, this can be a useful strategy to help groups make better decisions in the long run,” said co-author Professor Tim Rogers.
“Our model and experiments suggest a de-escalation tactic speeds up responsive consensus change.”
Publication details
Consensus Formation and Change are Enhanced by Neutrality, Advanced Science (2026). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202512301
Journal information: Advanced Science
Provided by University of Bath
Source: Neutrality can speed up and stabilize collective decisions, new study shows
From the study itself:
The general relevance of our theory and its findings was further explored through new experiments on human consensus-seeking behavior in an anonymous iterated voting game (with variable numbers of participants per group). Participants were given the choice to vote for one of two options at a small cost, with a reward (of value one and a half times that of the voting cost) given to all those voting with the majority; an additional ‘abstain’ option was also offered, with no direct associated cost or reward […] the highest probability path between consensus positions is through higher-neutrality system states.
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In further experiments, weremoved the option to abstain (see Section SI.6.4); in these experiments we found either a failure to settle on a robust consensus, or a substantially slower transit between consensus system states (see Figure 3d), consistent with the previously presented theory illustrated in Figure 1, demonstrating the crucial importance of neutral actors for consensus formation and change.
Robin Edgar
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